


All Through The House

by LittleRedPencil



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adashi Gift Exchange 2019, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21941248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedPencil/pseuds/LittleRedPencil
Summary: Just a nice, domestic, fluffy Christmas for a long-married Adam and Shiro and their little family.A piece for the Adashi Gift Exchange 2019; for adashi-time
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	All Through The House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Adashi-time](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Adashi-time).



Adam eyed the measuring cup with the gaze of a practiced engineer, verifying that the contents lined up exactly with the bright blue, plastic rim. When he was satisfied, he dumped the kibble into the black tin dish. 

Before he had a chance to put it down on the floor, a huge pile of fluff leapt up on the counter and shoved its face into the food. 

“Yes, yes, I know,” Adam rolled his eyes, closing up the kibble bag. “You’re starving, you haven’t eaten in days, you’re wasting away.” 

He frowned a little as he rolled up the top of the bag, stopping to look at it. This diet cat food was expensive, and he had calculated it into the household budget. But it wasn’t lasting anywhere near as long as he’d expected it to, the bag was already half empty even though he didn’t think it should be. 

“Half the bag was probably air,” he muttered, shoving it back into its place on the counter. “What a rip off.” 

The tinkling of glass caught his attention, sending up red flags to every one of his domestic instincts. 

“No!” He exclaimed, darting around the island counter and bolting toward the living room. “Roxy! Roxy, do  _ not _ !” 

Normally there was a barrier around the Christmas tree, just some cheap, plastic garden fencing they decorated with garland and lights, but he’d taken it down this morning so he could crawl under and pour some water into the tree stand. He made it into the living room just as the fully grown husky was halfway into the lower branches, grabbing her by the collar and carefully pulling her out in a way he hoped wouldn’t destroy any of the delicate ornaments. 

Roxy, having grown up with three cats and somehow become confused about her species, was attempting to follow Cooper’s example and curl up in the tree. The giant Maine Coon, one of three in the house, was stretched out across branches in the middle, almost perfectly hidden amongst the pine if not for the lights flashing off his fluffy white coat. His sister Bailey was lying quietly on her bed hanging in the window, neither of them as interested in eating around the clock as their brother Samson out in the kitchen. 

Adam set the fencing back up around the tree and called the disappointed husky into the kitchen with him. He gave Roxy a bacon treat and cleaned up Samson’s empty bowl, then returned to the task of decorating the cookies he had laid out on the kitchen table. 

It was just approaching ten o’clock in the morning now, and he was glad for the peace and quiet. Everyone else in the house was taking advantage of the day off to sleep late, but he had never been good at staying in bed too long past sunrise. He had expected Takashi to stay in bed until well past noon, his job as an Admiral had required him to be up very late last night for a radio meeting with some allies across three solar systems and very different time zones. But shortly after ten his husband appeared in the kitchen, still in the sweats and t-shirt he’d gone to sleep in and having made no effort whatsoever to tame his pillow-mussed hair. 

“Merry Christmas Eve,” Adam greeted as Takashi dragged himself over to the coffee maker. “Couldn’t sleep in?” 

“It’s this arm base,” Takashi grumbled, shifting the shoulder where the base of his prosthetic arm was attached. “It’s been a few years since it’s been adjusted, I have to go see Coran about it soon.” 

"The Atleans have offered to make you a lighter weight one hundreds of times,” Adam pointed out. “You know. One with an actual elbow.” 

Takashi grunted noncommittally. Adam knew why he’d put off having the prosthetic replaced for so long even though the bulky base could often be painful even with regular adjustments. His body changed with time and the metal was unforgiving…but it held memories of a very different time that he wasn’t ready to let go of yet. 

Samson dropped down off the island counter and began rubbing up against Takashi’s leg, yowling pitifully. Takashi blinked down at him, then winced and grabbed the cat food bag and measuring cup. 

“Sorry, I’m late,” he apologized to the cat. “But honestly, a few hours off is not going to kill you.” 

“What are you doing?” Adam looked up from decorating a snowman. “Don’t give him anything, I fed him.” 

“Oh. Sorry,” Takashi closed the bag back up and slid it back into its place, going for his mug again. “I didn’t think you remembered.” 

“Why wouldn’t I remember?” Adam asked. “I feed him every day at the same time.” 

“Wait,” Takashi put the carafe back and set his mug aside, looking down at the cat. “You feed him every day? I feed him every day.” 

“I’ve always fed him every day!” Adam answered. “From the time we got him! I feed him after everyone leaves for the day.” 

“I’ve always fed him every morning before you get up!” Takashi replied. “From the time we got him!” 

He reached down and picked up Samson. The cat was huge simply by breed alone, but the fact that he was also very fat was impossible not to see. 

“You little bastard,” Takashi accused. “All this time we’ve been wondering why you’re so overweight.” 

“No wonder this food is going so fast,” Adam scowled at the cat as he passed, picking up the bag. “Oh, sir, you are  _ so _ grounded.” 

“Who’s grounded?” 

Mayako, their oldest, came shuffling sleepily into the kitchen. She was the spitting image of Adam, her biological father, but currently shared Takashi’s askew sweat clothes and unkempt bed hair. Adam was just as surprised to see the household teenager awake before noon as he was to see Takashi. 

“Oh!” She looked at Samson, then looked at the clock. Snapping awake, she went for the cat food bag. “Crap! Sorry! I didn’t forget about you, I overslept!” 

“No!” Takashi exclaimed. 

“Stop!” Adam ordered at the same time. 

“Have you been feeding him every day too?” Takashi asked when Maya froze and put both hands up in the air in surrender. 

“Yeah? Before I leave for school in the morning.” 

Takashi let out an overdramatic gasp and looked back at the cat, who was still hanging in his hands by the armpits and looking more than a little nonplussed by the situation. 

“ _ Samson _ ,” He scolded. “I’m very disappointed in you.” 

“This cat is a fraud and a liar,” Adam declared, his words punctuated by the unmistakable sound of plastic garden fence falling over as it was climbed on in the living room. “Don’t feed him anymore.  _ Roxy! No! _ ” 

He darted off to pull the dog out of the Christmas tree again. Takashi hefted Samson. 

“Cat Jail,” he heard his husband decide as he hauled Roxy away from the tree. 

He reset the fence, this time making sure it was set up properly so Roxy couldn’t get past it, and returned to the kitchen. Samson yowled at him from beneath an overturned basket Takashi had retrieved from the laundry room. 

“Sorry, you’re in cat jail,” Adam told him with no sympathy. “Talk to your lawyer. Maya, do you want to help me with these cookies?” 

She scrunched up her nose, as he expected. She might have been his by blood, but she followed far more closely in Takashi’s footsteps…less about making, more about discovering. He had already known she would decline, but she was seventeen; she’d be upset if she wasn’t at least invited. 

A knock at the door set Roxy to barking, but before anybody had to go answer it was opened from the outside. 

“Roxy, down,” Curtis’ voice came from the living room and Roxy immediately quieted at the arrival of people he knew. “Adam? Shiro?” 

“Out here!” Adam called. “Erika, how was your sleepover?” 

Their four-year-old came bursting into the kitchen, half out of her jacket and waving around something made of construction paper. Her cousins Oliver and Thomas, five and thirteen, followed much more calmly as Erika immediately climbed up onto Adam’s lap. 

If Maya was Adam in blood and Takashi in personality, Erika was the complete opposite. Takashi was her biological father but she had been glued to Adam since the day she’d been born and it didn’t look like that was going to change any time soon. 

“I made a card!” She exclaimed. 

“You made a card?” Adam repeated, coloring his voice with what he hoped was a suitable level of disbelief. “For who?”

“You and Daddy!”

“Me and Daddy? Can I see?” Adam asked, even though over the course of the short exchange Erika had already hit him in the face with it three times.

She adjusted herself to sit across his lap, still in her boots and with her coat hanging half off, and whipped open the construction paper card to show him the inside. Inevitably, a shower of partially-glued glitter exploded outward, hitting him in the face and chest. His eyes were only saved by the fact that he was wearing his glasses, which now had a dollop of green glitter stuck on them just within his field of vision.

“Here’s you,” Erika pointed out several amorphous circles squashed together in the general shape of a person. Next to it were two more, none of them to any particular scale or on any specific perspective. “Here’s Daddy, and here’s Maya.”

“Wow, it’s beautiful,” Adam praised, spitting out a bit of glitter even as Curtis and Takashi did terrible jobs hiding their laughter where they stood across the kitchen. “Where are you?”

“Here!” Erika declared, snapping the card back closed and wiggling it a bit to demonstrate the sparkling gold blob on the front, which showered Adam with more glitter. “On the front!”

“I love it,” Adam declared, carefully taking the still-damp card from her and holding it out with two fingers. “Takashi, can you put this on the mantle? You can ask the Elf on the Shelf to watch it, I think he’s in there.”

“My dad says Elf on the Shelf is a torture device that mentally scars kids and prepares them for life in a surveillance police state,” Thomas declared without looking up from his phone. “He put ours in the garbage disposal.”

“If Santa comes looking for him, we can’t tell him we saw him,” Oliver added, as Erika wriggled off Adam’s lap to join him in climbing up on the stools to get at the finished cookies on the island counter. “Don’t tell Santa, okay?”

“I…okay,” Adam answered, bewildered, casting a glance at an equally surprised Takashi. Curtis rolled his eyes so hard Adam thought for a moment he might have seen the inside of his own skull. “Don’t worry, we’ll pretend we don’t know where the body is.”

“I thought it was a cute gift, so I brought one home,” Curtis said, coming closer to the adults and dropping his voice so the kids wouldn’t hear. “The light of my life”—here he gave Takashi a look, as if he were somehow responsible for his brother’s oddities—“said it would give the kids anxiety and make them feel like they were being watched. So.”

He made a motion of shoving downward, and a somewhat sorry noise that Adam assumed was meant to sound like an elf doll being mangled by a garbage disposal.

“Other than that, it was a normal night,” Curtis assured them. “Christmas movies, card-making, and pizza because Oliver decided he’s only eating circles this week. Why is Samson locked in a laundry basket?”

“High crimes and misdemeanors” Adam answered, ignoring the cat’s plaintive meows. “And at least circles are better than that stretch he had where he wouldn’t eat anything but chicken nuggets. Lots of foods are circular…like those cookies.”

“Hey!” Curtis turned, only now realizing that the two younger children were tucking in on the plate of iced cookies. He scooped Oliver up, holding him up under his arms in a way very similar to how Takashi had been holding the cat earlier. “Come on, you’ve had so much junk today already. At least wait until you’ve loudly refused to eat lunch before you start on cookies.”

Adam rose, carefully brushing off as much loose glitter as he could on his way over to remove the cookie plate from their reach. Erika saw him coming and shoved the entire cookie in her mouth on the mistaken assumption that he was going to take it off of her, which made her look like a mildly upset hamster.

He offered the plate to Thomas, setting it on the far counter after the boy took a couple, then moved to cup a hand under Erika’s mouth and pat her back when she inevitably began choking. She spit her half-chewed cookie into his waiting palm.

“Thank you, Papa,” she said politely. He had to move his hand out of reach when she recovered and tried to take the soggy remains back.

“This house is a zoo,” Maya snorted into the coffee mug she had raised to her lips. “There’s only two people with combed hair and manners in this kitchen right now and neither of them live here.”

“They also have to go,” Curtis answered, setting Oliver down on his own two feet. “Come on, guys. Say goodbye to your cousins, we have to stop at the store before it closes.”

“Bye!” Oliver said brightly. Thomas gave a half-hearted grunt as he pushed away from the wall, meandering back out of the kitchen the way he’d come, his younger brother at his heels.

“You guys are still coming over for dinner tomorrow night, right?” Curtis asked as Adam and Takashi followed them through the house. “Six?”

“Six,” Adam promised. “Well. Maybe six-thirty. It all depends on how long  _ some _ people spend in the bathroom getting ready.”

“You can’t rush perfection,” Takashi defended from where he was carefully situating Erika’s card by their Elf on the Shelf on the mantle. “But six. Bye, boys! We’ll see you tomorrow, have a good Christmas Eve!”

Curtis ushered his sons out, with Roxy dancing around them until the door closed. She stared at it for a minute, waiting for them to return, then eventually gave up and padded back over to lay on a pine bough Adam had tossed on the floor for her as an alternative to tree-climbing.

“Okay, let me get this glitter off, then I need to finish these cookies,” Adam declared, going back to the kitchen. He caught Erika, who was on her tip-toes trying to get another cookie, and began stripping her coat off and trying to smooth down her hair. “You’re home just in time, do you want to help me decorate them?”

“Yes!” Erika exclaimed, wriggling free from the jacket and letting Adam fix her ponytail. “They need to get done before Santa gets here!”

Maya blew a raspberry over her coffee cup, but Erika didn’t notice and she didn’t follow it up with any commentary about Santa not being real. Takashi came to join them in the kitchen again, running a hand through his hair.

“It looks like it’s going to be nice out for a few more hours,” he noted. “I’m going to take the bike out for a little bit before it gets cold.”

“Oh!” Maya perked up. “Can I go?”

Takashi pursed his lips, not wanting to answer that. He and Adam shared parenting responsibilities equally, but in matters where safety was concerned Takashi generally deferred to Adam. Maya saw the look and turned to Adam instead, setting down her coffee cup to fold her hands pleadingly.

“Please? He’s never home on the weekends anymore!”

Adam wasn’t the biggest fan of letting either of the kids on a motorcycle during the winter, even if they were riding with a parent. Black ice was always a concern, and where he or Takashi were skilled enough—and tough enough—to handle a fall, he was very wary of exposing the girls to that possibility.

But the weather had been dry and above freezing for the past two weeks, and Takashi’s schedule had indeed kept him busy most weekends throughout the last summer and fall.

“All right,” he allowed. “Make sure you dress for riding.”

“Yesssss!” Maya crowed happily and bound off to get changed. Adam gave Takashi a look.

“You better make sure you dress for riding, too.”

“Yes, sir,” Takashi smiled, excusing himself to go upstairs.

It was only a few minutes before they were both back, both wisely dressed in riding leathers. Takashi was still wearing that same black leather jacket he’d had when they were new recruits, and Maya was sporting the pink and white leather jacket she’d gotten for her birthday. Adam followed them out to the garage, taking out the keys for his motorcycle since he and Takashi both felt she was too young to have her own yet.

“Be careful,” he warned her, making sure her pink helmet was put on correctly. “Make sure you listen to your father, got it? No showing off or grandstanding. And when he inevitably lets you do something dangerous that would give me a stroke, do not come back home gloating about it.”

“Okay, okay!” Maya promised, carefully edging the bike out and down the drive behind Takashi. “Don’t worry, we’ll be careful!”

There really was no one Adam trusted more with his little girls’ safety than Takashi. And he went out riding with his husband regularly, so he knew just ow good and knowledgable he was when it came to things like this. But it felt like only a few Christmases ago that Maya was running around the house getting it ready for Santa, and he supposed that maybe he just wasn’t ready to let go yet.

He went back in the house, picking up Erika and returning to the table to finish decorating the cookies. Once that was done, they began the very important task of putting together the stockings for the pets; Erika very somberly told Roxy and Samson that they couldn’t be in the kitchen because there was work being done, and blocked the doorway so the household animals wouldn’t see what they were getting and spoil the surprise.

Takashi and Maya were much more awake then they returned, windblown and cheerful while she settled in to watch her sister and he got changed to help Adam make dinner. Takashi’s cooking skills had improved dramatically thanks to having two very critical young women in the house, and his lasagna was one of their favorite dishes. 

Then came the real magic of Christmas, which in reality a night of carefully coordinated misdirection.

Adam made popcorn and they corralled the kids into the living room to start a marathon of Christmas movies. It all started out with the two girls in the middle and a parent on either end, with Adam and Takashi taking turns excusing themselves with the excuse of needing a beverage or making some more popcorn.

Once out of view of the girls, it was a sprint to the garage, or to the master bedroom, or to the basement, to pull out the numerous wrapped gifts that had been hidden all over the house out of sight of a nosy teenage girl who couldn’t contain her curiosity. They both knew Maya would be in the living room watching the Christmas tree like a hawk in an attempt to catch them red-handed, so they carefully stacked everything in the sitting room where nobody ever went, over by the closed up fireplace.

When the last present was placed, Adam crept back into the living room. Takashi was down on the other end of the sofa now, with Maya seated on the floor fully invested in The Christmas Chronicles. It was nearly ten o’clock, and Erika was curled up next to her daddy with her eyes falling closed and her little head drooping.

Adam carefully picked her up and sat in her place, settling her beside him in the crook of his arm where she immediately curled up with a huge yawn. Takashi chuckled softly, putting an arm around him and reaching up to turn off the last of the lights and leave the room dark.

Gradually, Maya slid down to lay out on the floor, and Erika gave up on trying to catch Santa and passed out entirely. The movie came to an end but Adam made no move to get up, letting the credits play through until the screen finally went black and the room went quiet. Nobody moved.

“I think they’re both out,” Takashi whispered.

“The question is just how long they’ll stay out,” Adam murmured. “It’s Santa-hunting season, after all.”

He felt Takashi move, fishing for the remote. He went back to the streaming service and selected a fireplace video, bathing the room in a warm, flickering light and a soft wash of gentle Christmas music. Adam leaned back against him, letting his head roll back onto Takashi’s shoulder.

“Remember when we first got the house?” Takashi asked. “It was right after the war.”

“It’s kind of hard to forget,” Adam smiled, thinking back all those years. “The occupation ended and I was so glad I could stop hiding with a rebel group in the desert and come back to civilization. They’d barely announced our arrival on the base before you came out of nowhere and bowled me to the ground.”

“To be fair, you’d just spent a year fighting huge, nasty Galra,” Takashi pointed out. “You should have been strong enough to catch me.”

“The city didn’t even have electricity that first Christmas,” Adam remembered. “We didn’t have furniture.”

“Nope. We laid out sleeping bags and battery-powered string lights and we sat in front of that fireplace,” Takashi said fondly. “We made s’mores.”

“You almost gave yourself a second degree burn with a s’more,” Adam chided. Takashi only chuckled, and Adam felt him kiss the top of his head.

It had been a long time since then, and things were very different. The empty house, a simple haven for two tired soldiers, was now filled with noise and light and all the trappings of a very active family. The world was thriving again, enough that they’d been comfortable bringing two beautiful girls into it, and Adam couldn’t have been happier.

He lay there watching the fake flames, feeling the steady rise and fall of his husband’s chest beneath his head, the faintest trace of his beating heart where his hand rested on Takashi’s leg. The tree dripped in silver light in the corner, the tinsel reflecting the firelight and making patterns dance on the walls. Outside the temperature had dropped, but the house was warm and cozy and filled with the holiday scent of pine.

Adam drifted off at some point, lulled by the quiet music and the warmth of his husband’s arms. When he awoke again it was to wince against unexpected light, startled by a harsh whisper.

“Erika!” Maya was leaning over them, shaking her little sister. “Erika! Hurry, wake up!”

“Mnuh?” Erika mumbled, sitting up from where she had been tucked against Adam’s side, her hair a mess.

“Santa was here!” Maya told her. “Santa was right here in this room and you missed it!”

“Santa!” Erika exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. 

She scrambled up, accidentally kneeing Adam in the gut and ensuring that he was definitely awake. Takashi grunted behind him as he shifted, unintentionally passing on the favor by hitting him with his elbow. They both sat up groggily to find that the gifts had all been moved from the sitting room and set up around the tree.

“He was right here!” Maya was telling Erika with a look of fake shock on her face. She pointed downward, to a footprint that looked suspiciously like it had been made with one of Takashi’s boots and some powdered sugar. “Look! The tracks are coming from there!”

Erika bolted out of the room and Maya followed, visibly trying not to laugh. After a moment Adam heard Erika let out a screech and she came running back into the room, a look of sheer delight on her face.

“He came down the chimney!” Erika squealed happily. “The footprints lead there!”

“The footprints lead there?” Takashi asked in carefully crafted awe. “He came down the chimney and all the way in here to leave the presents, and we _ missed _ it?”

Maya came back in, looking terribly pleased with herself. Adam had made a quick motion as if wiping his chin, silently pointing out to her that she had gotten powdered sugar on her face, and she quickly got rid of the evidence before Erika noticed. Not that it would have been very easy for Erika to notice anything, she was currently losing her mind over the pile of gifts.

“Hold down the fort,” Adam requested, rising and leaving Takashi to direct the opening of the presents. He quickly went to the kitchen and grabbed the camera, and made two cups of coffee.

When he returned he pressed a mug into Takashi’s hands and curled back up next to him again, leaning into his arms to sip from his cup and watch the display of pure glee going on across the room. It wasn’t long before the floor was littered with wrapping paper and Erika was excitedly showing everyone all of the things that ‘Santa’ had brought her this year.

He felt Takashi’s fingers begin to lightly play with his hair, a soothing sensation amidst the unruly excitement of the morning. There were other gifts to give, more adult gifts from one spouse to the other, but those could wait for the privacy found behind closed bedroom doors and otherwise-preoccupied children. For now he relaxed into the warmth of Takashi’s side, adoring and content, as another Christmas morning went by. 


End file.
